Monday 29 April 2013

Animal Research

We are at the point of our animal research projects that we are working on putting our books together. Here are some pictures of us hard at work.

















Wednesday 24 April 2013

Making 2D and 3D Shapes

Today we played with straw and plasticine to create 2D and 3D shapes. While creating rectangular prisms, squares, cubes, pyramids, and a bunch of other shapes one of us said, "Ms. Lirenman we are making all our shapes out of spheres and cylinders". Can you see how?

Learning Our Spring Poems in the Spring Sunshine

Today our school murals were put back on our school wall. This meant that we had lots of banging and drill noises right outside our classroom wall. Instead of trying to learn our new poems inside the room, we headed outside to learn them in the spring sunshine. What a beautiful place to learn.



Word Work Without iPads

On Wednesdays we often lend out our iPads to Mrs. Morrison's class. Today is one of those Wednesdays but it never stops us from learning. Here is some of our word work fun.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Learning About 911

Today we talked about 911 and when to call it. Ms. Lirenman found a really cool app that allowed us to do a "practice" call 911 but it sounds like a real call. Some of us realized that we don't know our phone numbers or addresses and we need to know this information. The app is called Dial Safe Pro . Here are a few of us trying it.











Monday 22 April 2013

The Global Classroom Scrapbook

We have been working on bits of information to share for our global classroom scrapbook. Ms. Lirenman has let us decide what is important to us to share in this very special scrapbook. We have been busy coming up with little pieces of information about our class, school, or community. We'll be sure to take pictures of our pages before we send it on to the next school. Stay tuned. In the mean time here are a couple of photos of us hard at work thinking, writing, and planning.





Goal Setting

Today before we started our weekly journal writing we took a look at the chart that we created that lists what good writing is. We then decided what one thing we were going to work on as we wrote.


 At the end of the writing session we took photos of our writing, talked about our goal, and looked at how we worked towards it. Here's one sample but you can check the rest out on our individual blogs.

 

We know it's important to think about what we are writing and how we can work to improve our writing.  What do you do to make yourself a better writer?






Friday 19 April 2013

Meeting Our Friends from Fraser Heights Secondary

Since before Christmas we've been working with students from Fraser Heights Secondary on a joint collaborative project with Ms. Lees Humanities 8 class, and Mrs. Oakland's Drama 9/10 class.  Back in late November we suggested ideas for stories.  Then Ms. Lee's class wrote the stories.  Then the stories were returned to us and we read, illustrated, and created book using the book creator app.  We also turned our books into iMovies so we could share them with the world.  Once the stories were written Mrs. Oakand's class created plays and movies of the stories.  On Thursday we went on a field trip to Fraser Heights Secondary to see these plays.

To say that we were treated like royalty would be an understatement.  When our parents dropped us off the high school students were ready and waiting for us with individual name tags.  They ushered us off to their theatre and we took our seats.  All the big kids were so kind to us.  When then got to see the stories come to life.

For the first story they had even arranged for some of us to be in the play.  They gave us special masks. It was a lot of fun.



Here are some pictures of some of the other stories being acted out.




You can see here how focussed we were on the plays. You can also see that we are in their theatre so it really felt like we were watching real plays.  They big kids even took the time to chose images as the back drop, and they had sound affects too.  They did a lot of work creating these plays.


After we saw a few plays Mr. Tong's class brought us some snacks that they had cooked themselves.  We had delicious zuchini chocolate chip muffins, and yogurt with fruit.  They really did make us feel special.


Before we had to head back to Bonaccord, their principal came and talk to us too. She welcomed us to her school.


But before we left we still had two more plays to see.  These students created the stories differently though.  These students made video stories. Unfortunately we only had time to watch one of them but it was really good.  Ms. Lirenman says we'll get to see the second one really shortly, but back at our school.


Overall it was a really great field trip.  The high school children took such good care of us and treated us so well.  In fact the entire project was a great adventure. A huge thank you goes to Ms. Lees and  Mrs. Oakland for working so well with us.  And another special thank you to  Mr. Tong for  provding such yummy snack.  It's fun learning with High School children. Have you ever done that before?


A Voice Message from Melbourne, Australia!

This week we received a voice message from Melbourne, Australia.  It's always exciting to receive voice messages on our blog.  Take a listen.  You'll notice that while Mr. Raitman speaks English, his English sounds very different than ours.


Moderating Our Blog Comments

When ever we get comments on this blog we read them and approve them together. Sometimes it takes us a few days to get to them so if you've left us some don't worry. Ms. Lirenman always makes sure we see them. Thank you for leaving us comments.

Learning With Discovery Education

On Tuesday we look part of a live streaming put on by Discovery Ed. We learned from aboriginal children in Saskatchewan. While we were learning we where sharing our learning via twitter. It was a good way to learn.

Monday 15 April 2013

We Can See Project - Part Two

Do you remember back in the fall when we created a video book of things we see on our school yard?  Today we created a new one but this time we are comparing photos we took in the fall with photos we took today in the spring.

Can you notice how things have changed?



Many of the other schools involved with this project have also made new videos.  You can find all of the videos here.

Friday 12 April 2013

New Math Stations - 2D and 3D Shapes


Yesterday we started to explore our newest math stations.  These stations allow us to to explore 2D and 3D shapes.  In case you forgot we actually get to choose which math stations we want to work on to learn our math concepts.  Our new stations are the following.

1. Skype - Mrs. DeGroot's class in Spirit Lake, Iowa is learning about 2D and 3D shapes too so we are using Skype to give them shape riddles to answer and they are giving us shape riddles too.  We do it on our own, with the computer and it's a lot of fun.


2. Shape Posters - Using the camera feature on the iPad and the Pic Collage App on the iPad we take photos and create digital posters showing our shape knowledge.


3. Shape Castles - In this station we use 3D solids to create castles (or really what ever creation we want to make using the solids) and then we record and talk about which solids and how many of each we used in our creations.




4. Make a Movie - In Make a Movie we use the camera on an iPad to take pictures of  shapes around our classroom.  Then we talk about each shape we find and how we know what shape they are because of their characteristics.  We turn those small clips into a movie using iMovie.   Here is a sample.


5. What's My Rule - In What's My Rule we  sort shapes by at least one attribute. Once we've done that we take a photo and talk about what our sorting rule is.  Here is a sample.


6.  Shapes in Solids - In this station we label the shapes we see in solids. We use the Skitch app to label the parts of the solids.

How are you learning about 2D and 3D shapes?

Learning with Miss Komos' Class in Illinois

Today before lunch we read "!" by Ame Krouse Rosenthal.  We then used the website "Today's Meet" to discuss the book with Ms. Komos' grade one class in Illinois.  At first we introduced ourselves to one another, and then we started talking about the book.  While the website, and this back channelling with others is pretty new with us, it was a great new way to learn.  If you're interested you can see our interactions here.


Here are some photos from our side of the conversation.





We Met Ame Dyckman!

This morning all the grade one children at our school met in the library for a special skype call with Ame Dyckman. Do you remember her? She wrote the awesome book Boy+Bot.

Today she shared some of her favourite books with us. We learned that she is in New Jersey and while it was the morning for us, it was the afternoon for her.  She also talks really fast but has really great things to say.  One of us even said that today was the most awesome day ever because of the Skype call.  Here are some pictures of the call.  Have you ever skyped with an author? It was so much fun.



Thursday 11 April 2013

Learning with Children in Spirit Lake, Iowa

Today we started our 2D and 3D math choices. One of the choices is to work, via skype, with a student in Mrs. DeGroot's class in Spirit Lake, Iowa and to make shape riddles. The object is to try to either give clues about a specific shape, or to solve the clues about a specific shape. We took turns back and forth giving clues, and then answering clues. It was a great way to learn. Here are a few photos of what it looked like from our side of the computer. We can't wait to do it again tomorow.







Wednesday 10 April 2013

Living and Non Living

Last week during big buddies with Ms. Segec's grade five class we went out side to look for living and non living things.  Living and Non Living is part of both the grade one science curriculum and the grade five science curriculum.  While we were out side learning with our big buddies Ms. Lirenman gave us a few iPods to share.  Each group took pictures of what they saw and we passed the iPods around.  What we didn't know was that she was going to collect all our photos and put them in a dropbox file, and create a QR code so we could get to them easily.  So this week when the big buddies arrived in our classroom we were excited to see our photos again and learn how to use the Pic Collage app to create Living and Non Living posters.



Here are a couple of our final products. Be sure to check out our individual blogs for more.

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A Special Voice Message from Our Principal!

Tuesday 9 April 2013

It's Not a Secret Anymore!

Just before Spring Break we told you that we were working on a secret project with a very special song.  Well now we can finally show you what we were up to.

For the past few months we have been working with a student from Mr. Shareski's education course at the University of Regina. Twice a week during community read Miss Greensheilds has been listening to us read through Skype.  Since our class is working with his student we were invited to join in a lipdub of the special song sang by Commander Chris Hadfield (the Canadian Astronaut in Space) and Ed Robertson from the Barenaked Ladies.  If you haven't seen the original version please be sure to check out the "secret project" link. It's really incredible because Chris is in outer space and Ed is on Earth.

Here's the final product. Watch carefully though because you WILL recognize some of the people in this version of the song!



A very special thank you to Dean Shareski for letting us be a part of this very special project.  You can read more about this project on his blog.

*UPDATE!  Ms. Lirenman found out that Commander Hadfield WATCHED this video!  He watched something we are in! How cool is that!

Playing with Explain Everything and Exploring Shapes in Our Classroom

For the past couple of days we have been playing with the iPad app Explain Everything while exploring shapes in our classroom.  Most of us have created a little movie in the app showing some of the shapes we have found in our classroom.  Here are a couple of samples but there are many more on our individual blogs that you should check out too.




Animal Research

Yesterday we began our animal research projects.  We can work either on our own, or with a friend (or two). It was our choice.  Most of us chose to work with a friend since this is all new to us.  We've never done a research project on our own before.



Ms. Lirenman asked us which animals we were curious to learn more about.  She showed us a can, are, have graphic organizer modified from Mrs. Wideen to better meet our learning needs.   Then Ms. L showed us a couple of places to get information about animals on the iPads.



First we looked at the Pocket Zoo HD app.  It's really cool app because it has information about a whole bunch of different animals on it.  In the information there are videos and live cams. And the app even lets you hear the sound that the animal makes.



A lot of us also spent a fair bit of time on the Discovery Education site.  While we've used Discovery Ed in the past, yesterday and today we really used Discovery Ed. Many of us used the search feature to find videos, images, and other cool resources that taught us about the animals that we are curious about.



But of course, a trip to our school library helped us find some great books on the animals we are curious about.


While we are not sure what our final projects are going to look like we are excited to be doing this animal inquiry.  We look forward to sharing our finished products with you.








Thursday 4 April 2013

An Exciting Scrapbook Arrived Today

This afternoon, while we were in music an exciting scrapbook arrived addressed to Ms. Lirenman.


This letter was glued to inside front cover of the scrapbook.


The special scrapbook started travelling around the world last year as part of The Global Classroom Project.


The project started in Australia and then the scrapbook travelled to and Israeli school in Romania!


From Romania it travelled to England.


From England it travelled to South Africa.


From South Africa it travelled back to Australia.


From Australia to travelled to New Zealand.


From New Zealand it travelled to the USA.


And from the USA it travelled to Canada, but more specifically it travelled to US!  We can't wait to fill up our pages in this scrapbook before we send it on to another exciting country.  Now if only the scrapbook could really talk.  We are sure it would have many wonderful stories to tell.  Stay tuned.  We will publish our pages here on our class blog before we send it along.  It's pretty exciting isn't it!